Since shortly after it opened in 2003, the Jerry S. Rawls Red Raider Golf Course has earned widespread approval.

Golfweek has rated it the fourth best university course in the nation and the second best public access course in Texas, a couple of the latest best-this, best-that reviews for the Texas Tech facility.

There’s one place, though, the Rawls Course never shows up: Best clubhouse. For nine years, the staff has operated out of a combination golf shop/snack bar/office that was supposed to be — is, actually — a temporary building.

Even when the Rawls Course opened, a new clubhouse was said to be right around the corner.

“It always takes a little bit longer than they say,” said general manager Greg Winter, adding that it took a similarly long time to get a clubhouse built at the last new course at which he worked.

Finally, the wait is over.

Next month, the Rawls will open its privately funded, $3.7 million clubhouse and team facility, which are actually two stand-alone designs: the clubhouse of about 6,500 square feet for public patrons of the course and the team facility of about 4,000 square feet for exclusive use of the Tech men’s and women’s golf teams.

The temporary building in which the staffs of Tech and course manager Troon Golf worked is about 3,260 square feet.

Steve Long played for Tech from 1973 to 1977 and has had a Rawls Course membership since it opened. He smiled a lot last week as he toured a locker room in the team facility.

“It’s a far cry from when I was playing on the team back in the ’70s and we were being run off the local parks by the police for hitting our own practice balls out in the park,” he said. “Back in the days when we had six team shirts and if you were the sixth guy getting a shirt, it was either a double-X(L) or a small.”

Winter and his staff are scheduled to move in Aug. 8. They want to show off the new clubhouse for the first big event, the Jerry Rawls Partnership tournament Aug. 17-19. A ribbon cutting is set for Aug. 30, in conjunction with a scholarship donor tournament two days before the Red Raiders’ season-opening football game.

The temporary building will be disassembled in three or four sections, Winter said, and moved off the premises in mid-August. That will allow for about 35 more parking spots.

Long said it’s a step forward “from where we were in 2003, just being so pleased to have a golf course that was good. Then we went through a bit of a struggle with the conditioning of the course, and Troon’s remedied that. And now we’re going to have the team facility, so that when the coaches bring someone in, this place is going to be a showplace.”

The team facility will have separate men’s and women’s locker rooms, divided by a reception area in the center. Both locker rooms will have a television monitor on one wall and an interactive Smart Board on the opposite wall.

Coaches will have their own offices and conference rooms.

“I think it’s going to rank up there,” Winter said. “I think it’s going to be equal to or give them a recruiting edge on the competition.”

Amenities won’t be limited to Tech players. Leave the team facility, walk across the sidewalk and the new clubhouse is open to everyone. Among its features are a golf shop, a fitting room, offices, a restaurant and kitchen, a conference room and men’s and women’s locker rooms.

The restaurant has seating for about 50 to 60 under a tall, vaulted ceiling and room for about 40 more on the veranda outside, Winter said. There’s a fireplace inside the restaurant and a fire pit on the veranda, which overlooks the course to the north.

“You get a great view of the first tee, the ninth green, the 10th tee box,” Winter said. “Actually, you can see the 18th fairway.”

Winter said the golf shop “will rival anything in West Texas.”

Plans call for names of the donors who funded the project to be displayed.

Although completion of the long-awaited clubhouse might represent an ending point, Long said the Rawls Course aesthetics still can be improved.

“We’ll be trying to raise funds for the front entrance — the gate and the fence down the Tech Parkway — to tree it and beautify it,” he said. “That’ll be down the road a little bit, but we’ll start to work on that a little bit, too.”

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Rawls Partnership

The Rawls Men’s Golf Association gave in. The Jerry Rawls Classic, conceived to address a shortage of individual golf tournaments in West Texas, has been changed to the Jerry Rawls Partnership this year and will be a two-man, best-ball event.

The Rawls Classic started in 2008. Sergio Franky, Robert McKinney, Shawn Reeves and Will Aycock won the first four titles, but the event never attracted the hoped-for number of participants.

“We really would like to have been able to keep the Jerry Rawls Classic going,” RMGA member Steve Long said, “but there’s just not that many people in the Lubbock region that want to play individual events and so we just didn’t think it was what we needed.

“We’re looking for something that will help build the image of the facility and take advantage of what we’ve got now. We need to invite a lot of people, people who love playing partnership events, so we’re going to go with the demand.”

The Rawls Partnership is scheduled for Aug. 17-19 in conjunction with the opening of the new clubhouse and team facility. To protect pace of play, the field will be limited to 72 teams.